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Monday, March 4, 2013

Review: Reached by Ally Condie

Reached (Matched #3)
By Ally Condie
Publisher: Dutton Books

To Sum It Up:

The rebel movement, the Rising, is ready to make its move against the oppressive Society, and so, too, are Cassia and Ky. Ky is assigned as a pilot for the Rising, while Cassia’s covert role finds her placed back in the Society. Xander, now a Medic, also has a part to play in all of this. Despite all of its preparations, though, the Rising’s plans do not go as expected, leaving Cassia, Ky, and Xander to face a future even more uncertain than it was under the Society’s rule.

Review:

I’ll summarize my feelings toward the Matched trilogy like this. Matched: meh. Crosssed: very good. Reached: meh. While Matched didn’t do much to distinguish itself in my mind from the other dystopian novels I’d read, it held my interest enough to warrant continuing the series. I really enjoyed the second book, Crossed; I found it much more action-oriented, and I liked the character growth exhibited by the protagonist, Cassia. Crossed left off with the promise of rebellion against the Society by the Rising. So I was all set to read about the Rising storming into the Society’s territory and cleaning house, or something to that effect. That’s not quite how things went down in Reached, though. Not even close.

Ally Condie’s prose is very pretty and the primary reason why I’m not giving this book a lower rating. The writing style of these books has always had this gentle, kind of poetic feel to it that perfectly suits passive resistance. I wouldn’t have minded a lack of epic battle scenes in Reached at all if the build-up in Crossed hadn’t implied that there was, in fact, going to be a lot of thrilling action in Reached. Instead, Reached falls back on a dystopian trope to drive the plot. I don’t want to spoil the novel for anyone considering reading it, but suffice it to say that many a dystopian novel has gone down this path before and with greater success than Reached does. This turn of events was a letdown. The rebellion that I’d been anticipating since the end of Crossed never materializes, at least not on a scale that the word “rebellion” brings to my mind.

With each successive installment, a new narrator has been added. Matched began with just Cassia, Crossed brought in Ky's perspective, and for Reached, we now also have Xander’s point of view. I was quite curious to read from Xander’s POV because his character was still such a mystery to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel as though I gained any insight even after having firsthand access to his thoughts and emotions. Cassia, Ky, and Xander’s narrative voices all blended together and weren’t very distinct from one another. Not only that, but they sounded detached from what was happening around them, like they were just observing but not actually interacting. This was the main problem that I had with Cassia in Matched; I never got a sense of depth from her feelings. To me, she was a much more engaging character in Crossed. For the final book, I thought that she reverted to the inscrutable Cassia from Matched, which was frustrating to see. My favorite character from the entire series was Indie because she always spoke her mind and had a spark to her personality that none of the main characters came close to demonstrating. I always felt like I had to work at guessing what was going on with them, despite the first person POVs, and even then, I only managed to scrape together outlines of who they were as characters.

I think the amount of closure and satisfaction you derive from Reached depends on how invested you’ve become in the series. For someone like me, who only had a casual interest from the start, this was disappointing. Over five hundred pages of what was to me mostly dispassionate narration really tried my patience. The hope of seeing some dramatic action take place is what kept me reading, but I hoped in vain. I wanted more rebellion, a romance that was more than lukewarm, and to feel more involved in the story. Crossed was definitely my favorite book in the series; I loved reading about Cassia’s harrowing journey through the mountains in search of Ky. Sadly, I didn’t find any of the story lines in Reached nearly as compelling.

All in All:

My expectations for Reached turned out to be very different from reality, so in a way, I feel I set myself up for disappointment. In the end, I think this series and I were just not meant to be.

16
comments:

I still haven't read Crossed, it's been sitting on my kindle for an age. I'm not in a rush to finish the series though, even though it wasn't awful it simply doesn't shout "must find out what happened next!"Great review, Lee.

This series never reached must-read status for me, either, though Crossed did pique my interest for Reached. I was hopeful that this was going to be a series that just got better and better as it went along, but this last book didn't wow me at all.

I think I'll be passing on this series since it was only ever the cover that actually interested me and it didn't sound like it would blow me away that much. Your review doesn't encourage me and I'm not always into lyrical writing to be perfectly honest.

Shame this one disappointed you, especially when you enjoyed Crossed much more.

Though I liked Crossed, looking back on the series as a whole now, I think I should have stopped after the first book. When I began the series, my sense of the type of books that work for me, particularly dystopians, wasn't as defined as it is now. Ah, hindsight!

I try to stick out series that I find just OK until the second book because I feel like I owe them a chance. Things were definitely looking up for this series after Crossed, but Reached seemed to feature everything that I didn't like about Matched.

I've been putting off starting this for months, I loved Matched, Crossed was mmmkay so I'm kinda dreading being let down but I know I need to put my big girl panties on and just finish what I started! Great review

I hope that it works out better for you, especially since you love the series! It was a mixed bag for me from the beginning, so this book really needed to pull out all the stops to impress me, and it just didn't.

I love how you summed up this series, since I thought the complete opposite haha. I really liked Matched, but then Crossed disappointed me big time. That's why I haven't picked up this one yet, but if we're complete opposites on this series, I might have to haha ;)

You might just like Reached, then, lol. A lot of people seem to not have liked Crossed, but I enjoyed it a lot more than the other 2 books. I'd love to hear what you think of Reached if you decide to read it!

Your disappointment with Reached certainly echoes my own. I remember enjoying Matched quite a bit when I read it. It wasn't anything out of this world, but I had enjoyed Cassia's awakening to the Society. Like you, I really enjoyed Crossed. The 'on the road' feel of it and getting to know Ky more personally had really appealed to me. I also felt like it was building to an even more epic conclusion but...sadly, like you Reached was a BIG letdown for me. You put it perfectly when you said the characters felt disconnected throughout like all the changes they'd lived hadn't awakened their passions at all! But I digress lol. Some people have liked this one the best on in the trilogy so I guess it really just depends. Great, honest review Lee, you really brought out everything significant in the novel.

I'm happy to hear that I'm not the only person who really liked Crossed! I read almost half of it in a day, which was surprising because I hadn't been overly impressed with Matched. I loved the idea of the Rising and was excited to see what they'd do in Reached. Then they didn't do much. I was especially disappointed with Xander's POV; I wanted to know how he felt about the love triangle, but I hardly got any insight into that, either. I've seen a lot of positive reviews of Reached, and you're right, opinions of it just seem to vary from reader to reader.